Name of the Devil by Andrew Mayne Page A

explain to her my mother came from a difficult background. She was young when she had me. Younger than Patience. I’ve never been really bitter about her departure. After all, I barely remember anything about her from when I was a child.
    I pick the mud samples off the desk along with the printout from the lab. “You were saying this came from a bad place. What do you mean? Dangerous?”
    â€œYes.” She gives me a solemn nod.
    â€œCould I at least see it?”
    She thinks it over for a moment. “Okay. You’ll understand when we get there. But we must take my car. If they see someone from not around here, that would be bad.”
    Twenty minutes later we are on the other side of the small range of hills dividing Tixato. I see what Patience meant by a “bad place.” Hundreds of shanty houses pile on top of each other up a red dirt hill, above which it looks like part of the mountain has been scooped away. Assembled from rotten plywood, pieces of plastic and metal siding, the houses embody the poorest side of Mexico. I remind myself that even the United States still has pockets like this.
    One paved road runs through the area. Half-naked children hide behind doorways while scowling teenagers linger on carcasses of rusted cars, shooting suspicious glances.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I ask. “X-20” is spray-painted on a number of walls. I know it’s one of the fastest-growing gangs in Mexico and now the American Southwest, but I want to hear Patience describe them.
    â€œIt’s a gang. Many of the young people who live here are in it. It’s not as violent here as it is elsewhere, thankfully. It was startedby some former members of our special forces. Most of them are dead now.”
    â€œWho runs it now?”
    Patience shrugs. “I don’t know. They used to just be involved in street trafficking. Now they’re supposed to be in narcotics across the border. I don’t pay attention to those things.
    â€œThey don’t like outsiders here. Tixato is mostly a safe place, but if you went wandering around here alone, it would be no good.”
    â€œIs this why you say this is a bad place?”
    â€œNo. There, see the side of that hill? That’s why.” She points to where the vegetation and rock give way to the reddish earth that slopes down into the shantytown. “There used to be another village here. Then they had mudslides and the whole hill came down on them. This village was built on top of the wreckage.”
    â€œThat’s horrible,” I reply, trying to imagine the houses buried under the ones I’m staring at. My chest tightens at the thought.
    â€œYou don’t understand.” Patience’s voice descends to a whisper as she points to the ground. “They’re still down there. Over a hundred people, children. The old orphanage. They just built over them. They never dug them up. At the top of the hill there’s a small marker. That’s it, and even that marker has been covered by graffiti.
    â€œIt was bad. They killed one of the rescue workers because it took so long to get here. Officials barely checked for survivors in the buried homes. Government ministers won’t even come here for fear they’ll be killed. It’s like this place doesn’t exist.”
    The dirt is the same color as my mud. “This is where the dirt sample came from?”
    â€œYes. You can tell by the mixture of clays and volcanic ash. Soil composition is like a fingerprint.”
    We reach the end of the road and Patience turns the car around. On the second pass I see more than the weariness ofpoverty in the eyes of the people watching us: anger and resentment burns. These are people who feel betrayed not only by society, but also by God.
    I don’t know how the mud got from here to the tree in Hawkton, but I have no difficulty understanding how they could be connected in some way. Both places of devastation,